Motivational Quotes

Happiness

There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.

- Sivananda, Sri Swami

Best Quotes about Happiness

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Knuth, Don

Happiness is not so much in having or sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Macewan, Norman

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

Jonathan Haidt

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.

Yeats, William Butler

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

Happiness ain't a thing in itself --it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

Twain, Mark

Gaiety --a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Diderot, Denis

The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool. Yet people sometimes do just this. They work hard at a task and expect some special euphoria at the end. But when they achieve success and find only moderate and short-lived pleasure, they ask is that all there is? They devalue their accomplishments as a striving after wind. We can call this the progress principle: Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them.

Jonathan Haidt

10.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

11.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Louise Bogan

12.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Jung, Carl

13.

He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness -- the sense that is where we really belong.

Greene, Graham

14.

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

Koenig, Frederick

15.

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again -- this is the brave and happy life.

Buckrose, J.E

16.

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

17.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

18.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Russell, Bertrand

19.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.

Camus, Albert

20.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

William Cowper

21.

Happiness is a journey not a destination.

Sweetland, Ben

22.

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life.

Maslow, Abraham H.

23.

Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.

Chopra, Deepak

24.

Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult.

Ann Radcliffe

25.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

Seneca

26.

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.

Hume, David

27.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

28.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Schweitzer, Albert

29.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Dumas, Alexandre

30.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Adler, Fred

31.

While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment.

Proverb, Hasidic

32.

My happiness derives from knowing the people I love are happy.

Ketchel, Holly

33.

Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!

Bradley, Amanda

34.

Most of us experience happiness when we are enjoying life and feeling free, enjoying the process and products of our creative and intellectual processes, enjoying the ecstasy of transcendent oneness with the universe.

Muriel, James

35.

He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

David Nicholls

36.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.

Angelis, Barbara De

37.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.

Camus, Albert

38.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Sade, Marquis De

39.

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

Hazlitt, William

40.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

Shaw, George Bernard

41.

What ever our wandering our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and in the middle of the objects more immediately within our reach.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

42.

We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of unhappiness.

Lao-Tzu

44.

If you can't be happy where you are, it's a cinch you can't be happy where you ain't.

Jones, Charles ''Tremendous''

45.

Happiness is a by product of an effort to make someone else happy.

Palmer, Gretta Brooker

46.

Happiness is good for the body but sorrow strengthens the spirit.

47.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns

48.

No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he should be.

Tozer, A. W.

49.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Russell, Bertrand

50.

But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all.

Carlyle, Thomas